Our current predicament -one of which Baudrillard terms a ‘universal similacrum’, can be defined as a place where the distinction between representation and reality have broken down. “Reality becomes redundant and we have reached hyper-reality in which images breed incestuously with each-other without reference to reality or meaning.” (Appignanesi & Garratt, 1999, p 55)

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As a consumer of the’ person’ or ‘subject’ as spectacle, the mass audience is led to believe that the labour that has gone into creating the spectacle does not exist.In her article ‘The Place and Space of Consumption in a Material World’, Dr
Laura Oswald explores this loss of ‘use-value’ in contemporary mass culture;

Visual / semiotic consumption consists primarily of the pleasure derived from participating in the production of the worlds called forth by the image projected, whether fictional or real. What drives consumption is the desire to
penetrate the surface image and participate directly in the symbolic world of the brand. (Oswald, 2000)

She also states later in the article;

The mechanical reproduction of the simulacrum lends an appearance of reality to the appearance of use-value, in other words - produces an imitation of an imitation. This type of “screen play” drives entertainment consumption, teasing the spectator with the promise of endless gratification.
(Oswald, 2000)

Oswald suggests; the commodity and the spectacle fascinate us because they
exclude us, they place us in the passive position of “dreamer, spectator, consumer.”
Links between spectator “I”, the eye and the person depicted form “pleasure
points” which engage the spectator in the fantasy of lived experience.This

seamlessness between the reproduction of the person pictured (the image) and
the actual human being, is assisted by the viewers identification with the camera.
(A subject covered in both the previous chapter in spectatorship theory and the
coming chapter in relation to television images).

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Picking up on Gablers ‘thrill seeking’ it is necessary to put reality TV into the context of postmodern mass-media theory. Jean Baudrillard describes our society as one of ‘mass anaesthesia, devoid of authentic experience’ our appetite for the
‘reality’ experienced through entertainment of this kind is the result of our relishment of any ‘compensatory or virtual reality’, part of what Baudrillard terms a ‘ one dimensional mass of television “hum”’. (Virginijus Kincinaitis, 2000, p1) Modern image consumption combines truth with fiction, and provides us pleasure alongside security. We are given voyeuristic insight into ‘the everyday’ yet we are distanced enough to avoid any real emotional or physical suffering. Baudrillard sees the media as using “insecurity, shock and danger” (Virginijus Kincinaitis, 2000, p3) In order to allow us to pierce the information saturated age and receive true pleasure. It is inside this landscape that we begin to see the modern appetite for darker spectacle.

Here in Britain, The Broadcasting Standards Commision has in recent years reported a steady rise in ‘victim entertainment’. In 1997 it published a stern rebuke over ‘ambulance-chasing television’ that used “personal misfortune for cheap thrills programming” ( Newspaper ). David Morrison, a Leeds University specialist on the effects of television violence, said audiences found such programmes “exciting and entertaining” because they offered a” break from the mundane but were still rooted in the world”. He goes on to comment;

Real violence can actually be more low key than fictionalised violence and
yet more exciting...On satellite and cable channels these programmes can
gather a cult following and become a genre in the same way that people like
true crime stories, and the viewer can become desensitised. (Gibson, 1999)

We can see this dark facination in recent comments by C Bataille. The dangers inherent in looking and observation, become more accute when injury and death scenes take up a place of universal archetipal spectacle.“A passive consumer is thrown into a mythic chaos beyond death and life. Passively watching destruction and creation, he can savour his position as an observer...in order to see himself dying man should die while staying alive...the very spectacle of death encodes continuity in itself” (Virginijus Kincinaitis, 2000, p3)